Tag Archives: Spain

Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda (tr. Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent)

Widely regarded as one of the most influential Catalan writers of the 20^th century, Mercè Rodoreda lived in exile in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War. While there, she wrote many novels and short stories, including the 1967 novel Garden by the Sea, set in a Catalan coastal villa over six consecutive summers in the 1920s. It’s an evocative, beautifully written story of a glamorous, wealthy couple, Senyoret Francesc and Senyoreta Rosamaria, and their equally privileged friends – narrated by the household’s middle-aged gardener, a quiet contemplative man who has lovingly tended the villa’s garden for most of his adult life.

At night, from the mulberry and linden tree promenade, I would often find myself looking up at the masters’ bedroom window. I have always enjoyed walking in the garden at night, to feel it breathe. And when I grew tired I would amble back to my little house, reveling in the peaceful existence of all that was green and filled with color in the light of day. (p. 6)

Much of the story is told through the unnamed narrator’s observations of events unfolding around him, supplemented by his conversations with the other employees at the villa, including Quima, the household cook and a major source of gossip. While the gardener is a proud and private man, more interested in the well-being of his garden than in the personal lives of his employers, he cannot help witnessing various developments in the villa. Others sometimes use him as a sounding board or an opportunity to vent – and in some instances, he is called upon to act as a mediator, someone reliable and independent to set things right.

Over the course of the novel, there are lavish dinners and parties, dalliances between Francesc and a provocative housemaid, Miranda, brief separations and reconciliations, and various other occurrences. Moreover, the narrative is laced with beautiful descriptions of these events, showcasing Rodoreda’s eye for detail and painterly prose style, giving the story a visual, cinematic feel.

The electricians had been by two days earlier to string up lights in the garden, and the week before, Senyoreta Maragda, the seamstress, had a group of girls from her shop come to the house and they all holed up on the second floor making dresses for the party. And there was a lot of dashing down to Barcelona to buy lace and ribbons; something or other was always missing, and Quima and Mariona were in a frenzy with all the work that had suddenly landed in their laps. (p. 12)

Rodoreda’s evocative descriptions of the villa and its gardens add another layer to the text. The narrator, a widower, cares deeply about his work, tending the garden with a degree of devotion unmatched by those around him. For instance, he laments his employers’ decisions to sacrifice certain sections of the garden to make room for tables and socialising areas during the holidays, all of which take significant time and effort to repair. This disregard for the value of the natural world is a running theme throughout, questioning the values of the privileged classes who often prioritise short-lived frivolities over enduring beauty. As the novel unfolds, we also learn a little about the narrator’s backstory – in particular, memories of his late wife Cecilia, a former housemaid at the villa, who lives on in spirit.

The usual pattern of summer events is somewhat disturbed when the neighbouring land is sold to a wealthy newcomer, Senyor Bellom, who commissions a lavish new villa to be built for his daughter, Maribel, and her husband-to-be. Initially, this prompts Francesc to order an upgrade to his own summer house – complete with stables and a trainer for the horses – to avoid it looking second-rate compared to the neighbouring estate. However, more troubling is the identity of Senyor Bellom’s son-in-law, Eugeni, who turns out to be Rosamaria’s former fiancé. As with most of the scandal involving the Senyorets, our narrator hears about it from Quima…

[Quima] “…His name is Eugeni. And at one time he was engaged to Senyoreta [Rosamaria]. It’s like in the movies.”

[Narrator] “And what do the Senyorets say?”

“Nothing. It never happened. I’m sure Miranda has overheard a lot, but she’s keeping mum. I found out through Mariona. If you could have seen the dinner they gave to celebrate the young people’s arrival! Senyoreta wore her best dress. And the other lady… Maribel, her name is Maribel, in a sequined dress, tight, black, and her hair like a curtain of rain. A diamond the size of a plate, the two of them flaunting themselves. Senyoret [Francesc] was as stiff as an asparagus over dinner…” (p. 106)

It’s a development that ultimately ends in tragedy, heightening the sense of loss and unfulfilled desire that runs through this poignant story.

This is a subtle, evocative novel in which events unfold at a leisurely pace. While things happen, it not a plot-driven narrative as such; rather, the emphasis is on atmosphere, mood and the beauty of Rodoreda’s prose. The format of the story, in which developments are conveyed through a combination of observations from the sidelines, secondhand reports and hearsay, requires some reading between the lines. However, the rewards are there for patient readers to enjoy.

I’ll finish with a final quote, one that seems to capture something of the spirit of this wistful, melancholy book. This is my first experience of Rodoreda’s work, and I’m very much looking forward to more.

In fair weather they breakfasted outside, beneath the magnolia trees. When the weather was bad, they took their breakfast on the veranda. The windows there were hung with blue silk curtains, and in the summer, when a breeze made them shiver ever so gently, they looked like flags. They referred to the veranda as the steamship, and all the windowsills were ringed with blue hydrangeas on the inside, the fountain in the center too, but it was almost never turned on. Seynora Pepa preferred to have late tulips there, the ones with the ruffle. (p. 26)

Garden by the Sea is published by Open Letter; personal copy.

Hungry for What by María Bastarós (tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn)

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If you’re a fan of Mariana Enriquez’s dark, deeply disturbing stories on the horrors rooted in Argentina’s history, you will love Hungry for What, a ferocious collection of short fiction from Spanish rising star María Bastarós. With a background in art history and screenwriting, Bastarós has a sharp eye for arresting visual imagery, a skill that comes to the fore in several of these pieces. Here we have stories of oppressed wives, discarded lovers, neglected children and lonely, marginalised figures struggling with their mental health. The desolate landscapes and rundown neighbourhoods of northern Spain form the backdrop to the collection, with the environment’s corrosive underbelly bursting through the fragile surface, making its presence felt in these characters’ anxieties and fears.

A sense of latent unease or creeping dread permeates many of these stories. However, in several instances, the threat does not come in the form of a physical presence; rather, the horrors are more psychological, often the consequence of abuse, violence, or trauma lurking in the mundane and everyday. Moreover, each narrative feels unpredictable, often ending in what feels like a life-threatening emergency – a technique that invites us to imagine the potential consequences for Bastarós’ protagonists. Now, I should clarify here that this tendency to end on a cliffhanger isn’t a criticism. If anything, I think it might encourage readers to connect with these stories more deeply, possibly because one can’t help but hypothesise (and worry!) about what might happen to these characters in the hours that follow.

The Birthday Girl is an excellent example. In this one, an eight-year-old girl gets two chances at a birthday wish. But when her first wish comes true, events quickly spiral out of control, exposing the girl to the whims of chance and fate. This excellent, deeply sinister story builds to a shocking denouement, leaving the reader on a knife edge of uncertainty, fearing for the safety of both mother and daughter…

What’s also interesting about this piece is the mother’s lack of interest in her daughter’s welfare and desires. The girl’s parents have separated, leaving the father with one weekend per month when the girl is shuttled like a piece of luggage from one parent to another.

…the mother delivers the girl, the father gives her back. Each leaves her at the other’s door like a parcel bomb, or like the babies teenage girls leave at church doors without knocking or telling anyone. (p. 104)

The dehumanisation of people – almost always women or girls – also features in another story, Swarm, in which a pregnant woman finds herself as the sole wage earner in the family. Meanwhile, her partner seems perfectly content to remain unemployed at home.

‘I don’t mind babysitting while you’re at work,’ my partner assured me. ‘We can milk you the night before and I’ll feed it to him the next day.’

‘We can milk you.’

Those were the words he chose. (p. 87)

Elsewhere, in That Time with the Shotgun, one of the tensest stories in an intense collection, an oppressed married woman finds herself trapped between the demands of her idiotic, hair-brained husband – a man constantly embarking on the most ridiculous home-improvement projects that will ultimately remain half-finished – and her lazy, near-comatose father. When a booze-fuelled contest between the two men escalates out of control, the woman is forced to say which of the two she loves the most: her husband or her father.

Maybe she just has to pick one. What’s the worst that could happen? They’re not going to kill her, they’ve never deliberately laid a finger on her, though they’ve nearly pushed her out of a window or accidentally set her on fire more than once. One time, the husband fired a bullet into the ground so close to her toes that dirt exploded up and into her nose, causing her to sneeze. She’d wondered how many people’s last act was sneezing, before they felt blood gush from the wound like waste from a sewage pipe. (p. 33)

As the denouement to this gripping story rapidly approaches, Bastarós adds a twist, dialling up the stakes in an already explosive situation. Here, as in various other stories, there is a sexual dimension to the scenario, augmenting the level of threat.

In the opening story, A Grown-Up Dinner, we find a young girl determined to displace her widowed mother’s new boyfriend, whom she finds physically and emotionally repulsive.

The new boyfriend drones on and on about things the girl doesn’t understand, things like neoliberalism and perestroika and a post-Franco Spain. Even when he talks about things the girl thinks she ought to comprehend, he does it in a way that doesn’t make any sense to her. His language is cryptic, convoluted, inaccessible. And it gives her the sense that he’s hiding something. (p. 6)

One evening, the girl tries to recreate her parents’ favourite meal, supposedly as a ‘treat’ for her mother and this new man. However, the unpleasant twists she adds to each dish makes the dinner inedible. When the mother wises up to her daughter’s true intentions, she is furious, and her behaviour becomes increasingly unhinged. In the morning, the mother insists on taking her daughter out for the day, but she too has an ulterior motive to disrupt the dynamic between them. It’s another story in which we are left fearing for a young girl’s safety in the desolate wilds of the desert.

The mother spins round and round, laughing so hoarsely that it comes more from her chest than her mouth, and each time her face changes a little, so much that she doesn’t exactly look like the mother anymore, but her negative, a weird copy the girl doesn’t understand. (p. 17)

Initiation Ritual is another very memorable story in this vein, but I’ll come back to that a little later.

Elsewhere, Bastarós skilfully shows how fear and horror can present as disturbing sensations in the body, lurking within us just waiting to rise up. In Those Who Keep the Fire, a male nurse named Oskar is horrified when he suddenly falls in love with a baby – it’s definitely not a fondness or compassion for all babies, but a deep, seemingly genuine desire for one baby in particular.

Then he senses something unfolding with himself, something he has never felt before insinuating itself among his organs, tunnelling through his insides, progressing through his anatomy in a way that is at once pleasurable and excruciating. A black, slimy-scaled serpent coiling tightly around the top of his stomach. (p. 191)

Disgusted in himself and fearful of where these emotions will lead, Oskar resigns from his job, leaves Spain and finds solace in the wilds of Canada, where he ultimately develops a talent for nature photography. Nevertheless, when he receives an invitation to exhibit his work abroad, a brief return to Spain seems inevitable.

Bastarós does something very interesting with the development of ambiguity in this one. A couple of hints here and there reveal a small but significant element of the story’s denouement, but much of what actually happens during Oskar’s trip is deliberately left unclear. If anything, this serves to highlight our fear of uncertainty and the unknown. To paraphrase a famous quote, perhaps the greatest fear of all is fear itself…

Throughout the collection, Bastarós excels at conveying an ominous, destabilising atmosphere, effectively unsettling her readers and her protagonists in tandem. Initiation Ritual consists largely of a lonely young girl trying to navigate the wilds of the desert as she tries to walk from her mother’s isolated house back to the city where they used to live. Having left home on a whim, dressed in little more than her nightdress and slippers, the girl struggles to find her way in the shapeshifting darkness of night.

Sometimes, as she walks, the ground ahead of her almost seems to be moving. It’s as if it’s undulating, the earth parting way and inviting her to continue onwards. Maybe the desert does this for people, guides them towards their destination; or maybe it’s something more devious, a ruse to disorient you, to lead you to a specific place where the desert suddenly swallows you up. (p. 157)

From the swirling dust and stark isolation of the Spanish desert to the visible decay and neglect in rundown urban neighbourhoods, the textures of Bastarós settings are vividly evoked. The beauty and brutality of the natural world is another pertinent theme, highlighting nature’s inherent capacity to maim as well as heal.

Finally, a few words about Bastarós’ skills with humour; these are dark, menacing stories with the potential to crawl under your skin, just like that slimy, black serpent in the pit of Oskar’s stomach. Nevertheless, there’s also a wonderful seam of black humour here. For instance, In Notre-Dame Gone to Ashes, a doctoral student falls for a professor in her department, an alluring authority figure replete with the trappings of marriage and moneyed domesticity.

A man fifteen years older, tenured, married, with a teenage son and a newly renovated kitchen complete with a ducted island range hood. Naturally, this is the man she would fall in love with. (p. 109)

There are other examples too, sometimes adding a surreal, absurdist twist to an emotionally charged scenario.

So, all in all, a very impressive collection of stories here – dark, unnerving and visually arresting, skilfully exposing the social horrors in the routine and everyday. Highly recommended, especially for fans of Mariana Enriquez, Selva Almada and Samanta Schweblin.

Hungry for What is published by Daunt Books. My thanks to the publisher for kindly providing a review copy.

(I read this book for Stu’s Spanish and Portuguese Lit Month, details here.)

The Time of Cherries by Montserrat Roig (tr. Julia Sanches)

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The Catalan author and journalist Montserrat Roig (1946 – 1991) is a welcome new discovery for me. Her second novel, the award-winning The Time of Cherries (initially published in 1976), has only recently become available in English, beautifully translated by Julia Sanches and published by Daunt Books (my thanks to the publisher for kindly providing a review copy). It’s a vivid, richly-textured novel that explores life in 20^th-century Catalonia through the experiences of three generations of the same family, intertwining the personal and the political to exhilarating effect. Here is a story teeming with life, complete with all the messiness and tensions this inevitably presents.

The novel opens in 1974, during the tail end of General Franco’s dictatorship, with Natàlia Miralpeix returning home to Barcelona after twelve years abroad. As a photographer and keen observer of everything around her, Natàlia sees a country on the brink of change, yet still dealing with the legacy of earlier conflicts. While her parents’ generation remains marked by the trauma of Civil War and repression under Franco’s regime, the young are embracing the cultural and sexual revolution sweeping across Europe in the hope of a brighter future ahead.

Rather than returning to her father, with whom relations are strained, Natàlia decides to stay with her widowed Aunt Patrícia, who now shares her home with Encarna, the Miralpeix family’s longstanding housemaid. Roig is adept at shifting the story’s point of view, giving us access to multiple perspectives throughout the book (characters’ thoughts are helpfully presented in italics). Nevertheless, the absence of speech marks and line breaks in these switches demands a certain level of concentration from the reader, as illustrated by the following passage, which deals with Natàlia’s return.

She dresses like a gypsy, Encarna mumbled to herself. She lingered in the kitchen a while longer before stepping into the hall – solemn, her chest puffed out, wearing a mock expression of anger. Encarna, Patrícia shouted, look who’s back! Encarna looked at Natàlia and thought: Her figure may still be young, but her face is chapped and wrinkled, especially below her eyes – which were pale, like those of all the Miralpeixes – and in the corners of her mouth. She’s got old. (p. 19)

To Natàlia’s dismay, the beautiful lemon tree and pond – two significant touchstones from her past – have gone, removed after Patrícia sold her garden to a neighbouring office looking to expand. In some respects, these erasures could be seen as a metaphor for Catalonia itself, given Franco’s efforts to suppress the use of regional languages such as Catalan in the public domain. Chillingly, two executions have bookended Natàlia time abroad. Firstly, the leading Communist and politician Julián Grimau was killed shortly after Natàlia left Barcelona in the spring of 1963; then, just days before her return, the Catalan militant anarchist Salvador Puig Antich was executed by garrotte for killing a police officer during a shoot-out. While these events are not central to Roig’s narrative, they serve as horrifying reminders of the brutality of life under Franco’s regime.

Elsewhere in the novel, Natàlia reconnects with her brother Lluís, a successful, boastful architect keen to capitalise on the potential offered by free trade across Europe should Spain join the common market. Lluís and his rather shallow wife, Sílvia – a woman obsessed with her weight and physical appearance – have embraced the bourgeois lifestyle, complete with 1970s designer furniture and all the trappings of success. Nevertheless, the more we learn about Sílvia, the more we realise that she too is trapped – constrained by societal expectations and the demands of her husband. Before her marriage to Lluís, Sílvia was a promising ballet dancer. Now she must content herself with drunken Tupperware parties with her closest girlfriends where the women complain about their husbands while acting out troubling scenes from their days at convent school.

Lluís and Sílvia’s teenage son, Màrius, represents the future, the promise of a brighter tomorrow, and the liberation this will bring. Unsurprisingly, he is disillusioned with the current situation at home and dreams of an escape, eager to get away from his bourgeois parents and their materialistic concerns.

Roig’s narrative is non-linear, moving backwards and forwards in time to illuminate various incidents from the family’s past and their relevance to the present. In one of the novel’s most compelling sections, we see a young Natàlia being drawn into a political protest by her then boyfriend Emilio. It’s terrifying experience as a protest at the university turns violent and frenetic.

Run, run, run, Emilio shouted. But she couldn’t, she was being tossed this way and that, as if by the ocean. Whirlpools of frantic people spun around her, and all she could see were mops of hair, screwed-up faces, terrified eyes, hands grabbing on to whatever was in front of them, bodies shooting away and then hurtling back, all punctuated by yelling and swearing and girls crying. (p. 133)

Police flood the scene, lashing out with their truncheons, beating students at random, seemingly intent on senseless destruction. The incident ends with Natàlia and Emilio being placed in separate cells, and while Natàlia is eventually released following the intervention of her father’s business partner – a man of significant influence in the city – Emilio is less fortunate. Not long after this, Natàlia, now carrying Emilio’s child, tries to secure an abortion, which was still illegal at that time. In a horrific experience, which resonates with the one described in Annie Ernaux’s unflinching autofictional account, Happening, the back-street termination is botched, landing Natàlia in a clinic after Silvia intervenes to help.

The novel closes with a poignant reunion between Natàlia and her father, Joan, who is now widowed following the death of his wife Judit and in need of significant care himself. In some respects, this is the most complex relationship in the book, but I’ll let you discover that yourself, should you decide to read it.

While Roig’s concerns are weighty, the darkness is leavened with frequent flashes of spiky humour, giving the narrative a lively, vivid feel. In this scene, Lluís bemoans those customers dead set on having Swiss-style chalets built to their specifications despite the impracticalities and dubious taste.

Now and then, some bullish woman, usually covered in bracelets and earrings, would insist on a ‘postcard chalet’. Steep roof, wooden walls, mansards…Lluís suspected these people liked to visit Switzerland to stock up on chocolate and, while they were at it, deposit some gold in the bank. (p. 54)

There are moments of intense beauty and tenderness here too, not least in the delicate portrayal of Joan and Judit’s courtship, which plays out in a surprising sexual awakening where Judit takes the lead.

Roig also excels at evoking a palpable sense of place, vividly capturing both the physical aspects of Barcelona’s neighbourhoods and their ambience, tone and feel – and while it might sound hackneyed or cliched, the city itself really does feel like a character here.

The Santa Maria neighbourhood hasn’t changed, Natàlia thought to herself. Dim streetlights, dank walls, the smell of mildew, silence, the deadened patter of feet, the shadow of the church like a ghost in waiting, enclosed balconies with the occasional wilted geranium, laundry hung to dry on Carrer de Sombrerers. Every now and then a section of ruined wall revealed faded murals or the outline of a staircase. The neighbourhood is dramatic, run-down; it’s as if the buildings had been decorated only to be moved to a different stage, Natàlia thought. (p. 259)

The sky over Barcelona was the same heavy, solid grey of past springs. It was as if a single mass of clouds were slowly descending on the city, skimming the edges of the trees. A narcotic, headachy sky. (p. 5)

The novel takes its title from a song by the poet J. B. Clement, written during the Paris Commune when Parisians rose up against a fiercely oppressive regime. Clement knew the conflict would be followed by devastating repression, but ‘he dreamed of the time of cherries, the springtime of joy’. It’s a fitting name for this evocative portrayal of the old, wounded Catalonia poised on the brink of transition to a new, more hopeful democracy – a time when the cherries will bloom again.

Women in Translation – some book-and-wine matches, just for fun!

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Something a little different from me today. Some book and wine matches to tie in with #WITMonth (Women in Translation), a month-long celebration of translated literature by women writers, which runs every August. This year’s event has just finished – possibly the most successful yet, with hundreds of recommendations and reviews flying around the web over the past few weeks.

This year, I’m trying to make ‘WIT’ a regular thing by reading and reviewing at least one book by a woman writer in translation each month rather than just thinking about them for August. Plus, there are lots of WIT reviews from my eight years of blogging gathered together in this area here.

So, here are a few of my favourite WIT reads, complete with suitable wine matches. For each book, I’ve tried to select wines made from grape varieties grown in the same region as the setting, just to keep the pairing as local as possible. Naturally, my fondness for European whites and rosés comes through quite strongly here, but please feel free to suggest some book-and-wine matches from further afield. South America in particular is a bit of a gap for me!

All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg (tr. Angus Davidson)

While I’ve enjoyed several reissues of Natalia Ginzburg’s work in recent years, All Our Yesterdays feels like the one I’ve been waiting to read – a rich, multilayered evocation of Italian family life spanning the duration of the Second World War. The novel focuses on two Italian families living opposite one another in a small Northern Italian town. While one family derives its wealth from the town’s soap factory, the other is middle-class and relatively short of money, contrasting the fortunes of these neighbouring households.

Ginzburg has written a truly remarkable novel here, a story of ordinary people living through extraordinary times, beautifully told with a warmth and generosity of spirit that reflects the Italian character. There are some lovely touches of dry humour throughout, as the author maintains a wry sense of detachment from life’s absurdities, despite the gravity of events. One of my favourite books this year.

Wine Match: Given that Ginzburg grew up in Turin, I’m looking at wines from the Piedmont region as suitable matches for this one. The area is famed for its Barolo and Barbaresco wines made from the Nebbiolo grape variety. However, these fine wines tend to be quite pricey. A Langhe Nebbiolo is a more approachable, cost-effective option. The Wine Society’s Exhibition Langhe Nebbiolo is a great example – made by the Rizzi estate, this wine has a lovely cherry, raspberry and rose-petal aroma with plenty of juicy red fruit on the palate. G. D Vajra is another excellent producer worth seeking out.

The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán (tr. Paul O’Prey and Lucia Graves)

This is a marvellous novel, a great discovery for me, courtesy of fellow blogger, Grant from 1streading. The House of Ulloa tells a feisty tale of contrasting values as a virtuous Christian chaplain finds himself embroiled in the exploits of a rough and ready marquis and those of his equally lively companions. Several scenes are rich in humour, but the novel’s darker undercurrent is never too far away – the gothic atmosphere of the Ulloa mansion is beautifully evoked. There are hunting expeditions, some rather boisterous banquets and plenty of quieter moments, too. This classic of 19^th-century Spanish literature is a joy from start to finish, packed full of incident to keep the reader entertained.

Wine Match: Bazán’s novel is set in Galicia in northwest Spain, home to the Godello grape variety, one of my favourite Spanish whites. The Maruxa Godello, from the Valdeorras Denominación de Origen (DO), is a great example. There’s plenty of lemony and peachy fruit here, with enough body to stand up to chicken or fish. The Valdesil Montenovo Godello (from the same DO) is another winner, too.

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan (tr. Irene Ash vs Heather Lloyd)

A quintessential summer read, Bonjour Tristesse is an irresistible story of love, frivolity and the games a young girl plays with other people’s emotions, all set against the background of the glamorous French Riviera. Seventeen-year-old Cécile is spending the summer on the Côte d’Azur with her father, Raymond, and his latest lover, Elsa. Everything is leisurely and glorious until another person arrives on the scene, the glamorous and sophisticated Anne, whose very presence threatens to disrupt Cécile’s idyllic life with her father. Sagan’s novella is an utterly compelling read with a dramatic denouement. My review is based on Heather Lloyd’s 2013 translation, but if you’re thinking of reading this one. I would strongly recommend Irene Ash’s 1955 version – it’s more vivacious than the Lloyd, with a style that perfectly complements the story’s palpable atmosphere and mood.

Wine Match: As we’re in the South of France for this one, it’s got to be a rosé from Provence! There are several good producers here, and it’s pretty hard to go wrong. The Wine Society’s Exhibition Côtes de Provence Rosé (from Château des Mesclances) is a good bet when available. Dangerously drinkable with lovely redcurrant and strawberry fruit, this round, fresh-tasting rosé is made from Cinsault – maybe with a touch of Grenache in the blend. The Mirabeau en Provence Classic Rosé (readily available from Waitrose) is another excellent choice.

Gilgi, One of Us by Irmgard Keun (tr. Geoff Wilkes)

This striking portrayal of a determined young woman in Weimar-era Cologne is an underrated gem. Right from the start, I found Gilgi an utterly captivating protagonist, a strong feminist presence with a thoroughly engaging voice. In essence, the novella explores Gilgi as an individual and the competing demands on her future direction as she finds herself torn between two seemingly irreconcilable passions: her desire for independence and a successful career vs her love for Martin (a free spirit) and the emotional fulfilment this delivers. Keun does a terrific job in capturing her protagonist’s conflicted emotions, frequently in a state of flux. In many respects, this is a very progressive book. Not only is it written in a modernist style, but it also touches on several forward-thinking themes, including adoption, opportunities for women in the workplace, financial independence from men, sex outside of marriage, unwanted pregnancy, and the impact of debt on a person’s mental health. A thoroughly impressive book in more ways than one.

Wine Match: Cologne is not too far from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer wine region, making Riesling a great match for Gilgi. The von Kesselstatt Rieslings tend to be excellent. Their Niedermenniger Riesling Kabinett is round and racy with plenty of citrus fruit. Off-dry in style with a nice balance between acidity and sweetness, this wine would pair brilliantly with Chinese or Thai food. The Rieslings from Dr Loosen and J.J. Prūm are worth checking out, too.

Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judite de Carvalho (tr. Margaret Jull Costa)

First published in Portugal in 1966 and recently translated into English by Margaret Jull Costa, this brilliant novella is something of a minor masterpiece of 20^th-century literature. It’s a work of great precision and compression – a quietly devastating story of three generations of women, confined and subsumed by the men who surround them. There are similarities with Anita Brookner’s novels here – both thematically and stylistically – as Carvalho goes deep into the inner lives of her female protagonists, conveying them unflinchingly for the reader to see. Fans of Natalia Ginzburg and Penelope Mortimer will also find much to admire in this novella – a timeless reminder of how destructive the actions of unthinking men can be, defining and destroying the women who serve them.

Wine Match: Empty Wardrobes is set in Lisbon, making a white wine from the Lisboa Valley a potential choice. Alvarinho is grown here – the same grape variety as Albariño, found in the Galicia region of Spain. The AdegaMãe Lisboa Valley Selection looks like a fun one to try. A blend of Arinto, Viosinho, Alvarinho and Viognier, the wine notes promise stone and citrus fruits with a touch of Atlantic freshness and zest. Alternatively, if you’d prefer a red, a wine made from Touriga Nacional or Tinto Roriz (known as Tempranillo in Spain) would be an excellent bet.

Meeting in Positano by Goliarda Sapienza (tr. Brian Robert Moore)

This is such a gorgeous novel, as luminous as a hazy summer’s day, shimmering with beauty and sensuality. Its author, the Italian actress and writer Goliarda Sapienza, started her career in theatre and film, working with Luchino Visconti in the 1940s and ’50s; and it was a film that first brought Sapienza to Positano, the magical Italian village on the Amalfi Coast she viewed as her spiritual home. The novel – a sensual story of female friendship – has a semi-autobiographical feel, set in the glamour of 1950s Italy. The intensity of the bond between the two women is beautifully conveyed, encompassing joy, desire, regret, longing and tragedy, making this a wonderful rediscovered gem.

Wine Match: Italian white wines from the Campania region would be ideal here. Luckily, they’re also some of my favourites, making this novel a pleasure to match. A wine made from either Fiano, Falanghina or Greco would be perfect for this one. The Falanghina from the Feudi San Gregorio estate is delicious – fresh and vibrant with some lovely citrus and stone fruit notes, this is summer in a glass. Alternatively, some of the major supermarkets have partnered with reputable producers to offer own-label wines, including those made from Fiano or Falanghina – and these are always worth a try.

So, I hope you enjoyed that little tour around some of my favourite WIT reads and wines of Europe. Feel free to let me know your thoughts on these books, together with any wine matches or recommendations of your own in the comments below!

Valdesil Montenovo Godello 2019 – a Spanish white wine for #SpanishLitMonth

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Seeing as Stu’s Spanish Lit Month has been extended from July through to the end of August, I thought I would sneak in a brief wine post to tie in with the event before the month runs away with me! Luckily, white wines from Spain form much of the backbone of my summer drinking – alongside Italian whites and my beloved rosés, of course.

Galicia, in northwest Spain, is an area famed for its albariño – a crisp, citrusy white wine, often displaying a minerally edge. (I’ve written about this grape variety in the past – mostly recently in 2016, also as a nod to Spanish Lit Month, by chance.) Nevertheless, albariño isn’t the only grape variety Galicia has to offer; there is godello, too, a white wine with a little more body or ‘weight’ than its regional stablemate.

Valdesil Montenovo Godello (2019) is an excellent example, an unoaked wine that hails from the Valdeorras Denominación de Origen (reputedly the best region for this particular grape). The vineyards in the Valdesil estate are worked by hand, with the Montenovo being the youngest, freshest expression of godello this winery produces.

In terms of flavour profile, there are notes of pear, peach and apple here, maybe with a touch of something minerally too. It’s a little reminiscent of unoaked white Burgundy – a more interesting, layered version, perhaps? A very well-balanced wine with enough body to stand up to chicken, garlic and a bit of chilli heat. If you like unoaked chardonnay but have never tried godello, I can only encourage you to give it a go – hopefully you’ll enjoy it too!

I bought this wine from The Wine Society, where the 2020 vintage is currently available at £12.50 per bottle. (Disclosure: I have a link to The Society, so the vast majority of my wines are purchased there.) Alternatively, you can use Wine Searcher to look for stockists of this wine and other gorgeous godellos!

And if you’re looking for something to read while sipping a Spanish wine in the garden, here are the links to my latest reviews for Spanish Lit Month:

Ana Maria Matute’s The Island (tr. Laura Lonsdale), a darkly evocative coming-of-age novel that draws on the blistering heat of Mallorca to great effect; and a round-up post on my other reading recommendations, including books by Javier Marías, Valeria Luiselli, Enrique Vila-Matas, and many more. Happy reading (and drinking) for Spanish Lit Month!

August is #WITMonth – some recommendations of books by women in translation

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As you may well know, August is Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), hosted by Meytal at Biblibio. It’s a month-long celebration of translated literature by women writers – you can find out more about it here. I’ve reviewed quite a few books in this category over the past few years; so, if you’re looking for some ideas on what to read for WIT Month, here are a few of my recent favourites.

The Island by Ana Maria Matute (tr. Laura Lonsdale)

The loss of innocence is one of my favourite themes in literature. It’s a thread that runs through many coming-of-age novels, this one included. Matute’s story is set on the island of Mallorca, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. With her mother no longer alive and her father away in the war, fourteen-year-old Matia has been taken to the island to live with her grandmother, Aunt Emilia and duplicitous cousin, Borja – not a situation she relishes. This dark, visceral novel charts Matia’s awakening to the adult world, beautifully executed in the author’s lucid prose. Matute excels at heightening the sense of danger on the island through her vivid descriptions of the elements, e.g., the intense heat of the sun and the turbulent depths of the sea.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (tr Antonia Lloyd Jones)

This 2009 novel by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, is quite a difficult one to describe. It is by turns an existential murder mystery, a meditation on life in an isolated, rural community and, perhaps most importantly, an examination of our relationship with animals and their place in the hierarchy of society. That might make Plow sound heavy or somewhat ponderous; however, nothing could be further from the truth. This is a wonderfully accessible book, a metaphysical novel that explores some fascinating and important themes in a highly engaging way. It’s also beautifully written, by turns arresting, poetic, mournful, and blacky comic. I loved it.

Valentino and Sagittarius by Natalia Ginzburg (tr. Avril Bardoni)

There has been something of a revival of interest in the Italian neorealist writer Natalia Ginzburg in recent years, driven by reissues of some of her novels and essays by Daunt Books and NRYB Classics. Valentino and Sagittarius are two separate yet related novellas from the 1950s, reissued together in one stylish edition from NYRB. Both stories deal with the messy business of family relationships, the tensions that arise when one person behaves selfishly at the expense of those around them. Resentment, delusion, evasion, pride, loyalty and compassion all come together to form these perceptive, richly textured narratives. When viewed together, they highlight how foolhardy we can be, especially when investing all our hopes in a particular individual or venture – the fallout for the surrounding family members is often painful in the extreme.

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki (tr. Karen Van Dyck)

First published in 1946, Three Summers is something of a classic of Greek literature, a languid coming-of-age novel featuring three sisters, set over three consecutive summer seasons. At first sight, it might appear that the book presents a simple story, one of three very different young women growing up in the idyllic Greek countryside. However, there are darker, more complex issues bubbling away under the surface as the sisters must learn to navigate the choices that will shape the future directions of their lives. Sexual awakening is a major theme, with the novel’s lush and sensual tone echoing the rhythms of the natural world. Ultimately though it is the portrait of the three sisters that really shines through – the opportunities open to them and the limitations society may wish to dictate. This a novel about working out who you are as a person and finding your place in the world; of being aware of the consequences of certain life choices and everything these decisions entails. (I read this book in the NYRB Classics livery, but Penguin have recently published a beautiful new edition as part of their European Writers series.)

Evening Descends Upon the Hills by Anna Maria Ortese (tr. Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee)

First published in Italian in 1953, this is a brilliant collection of short stories and reportage by the critically acclaimed writer Anna Maria Ortese. As a whole, the book conveys a vivid portrait of post-war Naples in all its vitality, devastation and squalor – a place that remains resilient despite being torn apart by war. Sharp contrasts are everywhere Ortese’s writing, juxtaposing the city’s ugliness with its beauty, the desperation of extreme poverty with the indifference of the bourgeoisie, the reality of the situation with the subjectivity of our imagination. The attention to detail is meticulous – as is the level of emotional insight, particularly about women’s lives and family dynamics.

Child of Fortune by Yuko Tsushima (tr. Geraldine Harcourt)

This novella, which revolves around Kōko, a thirty-six-year-old divorced woman, and her eleven-year-old daughter, Kayako, shares many similarities with Tsushima’s Territory of Light, a book I really adored. Like Territory, Child of Fortune explores themes of marginalisation, motherhood and the pressure to conform to conventional societal expectations – the setting of 1970s Japan is highly significant here. This is a haunting, beautifully written book – by turns subtle, reflective and deeply melancholic. And yet there is a glimmer of hope at the end, a sense of Kōko finally seizing control, once again ready to forge her own path in life.

(You can find some of my other faves in last year’s WIT Month recommendations post from July 2020, including books by Françoise Sagan, Irmgard Keun, Yuko Tsushima and Tove Ditlevsen. There’s also my list of recommendations for foreign language films directed by women – a Twitter thread I may well repeat next month, with new suggestions of movies to seek out.)

Do let me know what you think of these books if you’ve read some of them already or if you’re thinking of reading one or two of them next month. Perhaps you have a favourite book by a woman in translation? Please feel free to mention it below.

The Island by Ana María Matute (tr. Laura Lonsdale)

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The loss of innocence is one of my favourite themes in literature. It’s a thread that runs through many coming-of-age novels, including Agostino by Alberto Moravia, Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig and The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley. Ana María Matute’s 1959 novella The Island – recently translated by Laura Lonsdale – is an excellent addition to the list, a darkly evocative narrative with a creeping sense of oppression. I loved it.

The story is set on the island of Mallorca, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. With her mother no longer alive and her father away in the war, Matia has been taken to the island to live with her grandmother (or ‘abuela’), Aunt Emilia and cousin Borja – not a situation she relishes. Also living in the house are the family’s housekeeper, Antonia, and her son, Lauro, who acts as the children’s teacher and companion. At fifteen, Borja is a duplicitous boy, smart enough to behave sweetly in the company of his grandmother but sufficiently malevolent to show his true colours when her back is turned.

He affected innocence and purity, gallantry and poise in the presence of our grandmother, when in reality […] he was weak, cruel and proud, just a good-for-nothing boy on the way to being a man. (p.5)

Borja is particularly cruel to Lauro, whom he calls ‘Chinky’, confident in the belief that he can leverage a shameful secret the tutor is harbouring. Matia, on the other hand, has been expelled from her former convent school for kicking the Prioress. Consequently, the children’s grandmother – a tyrannical old crone who keeps watch over the neighbouring tenants through her opera glasses – considers Matia to be disobedient and in need of taming. In truth, however, Matia is simply confused and lonely, the product of a disruptive childhood short on parental love and affection – now firmly in adolescence, a time of turbulent emotions for any young girl.

One of the things Matute excels at in this novel is her depiction of Mallorca as an alluring yet malevolent setting. While we might consider the Mediterranean islands to be idyllic, Matute’s Mallorca has a radically different atmosphere. In reality, it is a brutal and oppressive place, torn apart by familial tensions and longstanding political divisions.

Throughout the novella, the author makes excellent use of the natural world to reinforce this impression of danger. For example, the sun is frequently portrayed as intense, blistering and ferocious, mirroring the island’s capacity to breed violence and inflict damage on its inhabitants.

A cruel sense of violence, an irritated fire burned above, and everything was filled, saturated, with its black light. (p. 53)

The sea, too, can seem threatening, a volatile force with the potential to unnerve.

From high up in the square, where the Jews had been burned alive, the sea was like a deep, blue threat, terrifying and unsteady, mixing with the wind and sky. And it seemed that shining worlds could disappear there, and rootless echoes wander and be lost. Looking down, it seemed that everything must roll down to meet it. And life seemed both terrible and remote. (p. 80)

Menacing associations are everywhere on this island from the damaged agaves, their ‘edges withering like scar tissue’ to the stony soil, ‘an accretion of the dead upon the dead’. The torrid atmosphere is further augmented by the sickly aromas in the abuela’s house, a heady blend of jasmine, leather and cedar, plus the smoke from Aunt Emilia’s Turkish cigarettes.

Matute is particularly adept at setting her narrator’s internal anxieties against the island’s broader political and racial conflicts. Consequently, as the novella unfolds, Matia becomes increasingly aware of the violence and injustice that surround her. At first, Matia falls in line with Borja, the two children playing chess with one another by day and holding whispered conversations together at night. Nevertheless, there are certain developments that Matia doesn’t fully understand, things that she hears or observes that seem confusing, particularly when taken at face value. Unsurprisingly, this strengthens her impressions of the adult world as a mysterious, potentially dangerous place.

But there was something about life, it seemed to me, that was all too real. I knew, because they never stopped reminding me, that the world was wicked and wide. And it frightened me to think it could be even more terrifying than I imagined. I looked at the earth, and I remembered that we lived upon the dead. (p. 76)

In her desire for a bit of warmth and friendship, Matia begins to gravitate towards Manuel Taronji, the son of a neighbouring family persecuted by the locals for their political allegiances and Jewish heritage. In effect, Matia sees Manuel as a kindred spirit, someone she can talk to openly despite his outsider status as a ‘Chueta’. Borja, however, takes a vehement dislike to Manuel, particularly when it emerges that he might be the illegitimate son of Jorge, the powerful islander whom Borja clearly worships.

During the novella, we learn that Manuel’s stepfather, José, was murdered by the local fascists – the jack-booted Taronji brothers – for his Republican leanings. The fact that José was killed by members of his own extended family illustrates the strength of feeling surrounding the Nationalist movement, with supporters being prepared to kill their own flesh and blood to further the cause. Moreover, it gives a sense of the complex network of connections between the island’s inhabitants, encompassing familial, racial and political dimensions.

While Borja and his teenage contemporaries fight one another with butcher’s hooks, these various episodes of violence are punctuated by reports of the broader conflict in mainland Spain, typically relayed through hearsay and secondhand information.

(‘They say they’re killing whole families over there, shooting priests and putting out their eyes…throwing people into vats of boiling oil…May God have mercy on their souls!’) My grandmother would look shocked, but her eyes would shift a little closer together, like siblings whispering dark secrets to one another, as she listened to these morbid tales. (p. 3)

Alongside these depictions of brutality at the time of the Civil War, Matute remains alert to the atrocities of the past, reminding us that the island has long harboured prejudices against the Jewish community. For example, there are mentions of ‘the square, where the Jews had been burned alive’ – a direct reference to a case in which three Jews – including one named Taronji – were burned alive for refusing to denounce their faith. These echoes between past and present acts of barbarism add another dimension to the narrative, reminding us that prejudices can run deep if they remain unchecked.

As the novella draws to a close, Matia is left with few illusions about the adult world. The beloved fables and fairy tales of her childhood are revealed to be fallacies, contrasting starkly with the duplicity, betrayal and cruelty she sees being played out around her.

In summary, then, The Island, is a dark and visceral novella, beautifully executed through Matute’s lucid prose. This combination of a highly evocative first-person narrative and the oppressive atmosphere is somewhat reminiscent of Carmen Laforet’s Nada, another excellent Spanish novel set around the time of the Civil War.

The Island is published by Penguin; my thanks to the publishers for kindly providing a review copy. I read this book for Stu’s Spanish Lit Month – more details here.

Spanish Lit Month – some reading recommendations for July

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As some of you may know, July is Spanish Lit Month (#SpanishLitMonth), hosted by Stu at the Winstonsdad’s blog. It’s a month-long celebration of literature first published in the Spanish language – you can find out more about it here. In recent years, Stu and his sometimes co-host, Richard, have also included Portuguese literature in the mix, and that’s very much the case for 2021 too.

I’ve reviewed quite a few books that fall into the category of Spanish lit over the lifespan of this blog (although not so many of the Portuguese front). If you’re thinking of joining in and are looking for some ideas on what to read, here are a few of my favourites.

The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazan (tr. Paul O’Prey and Lucia Graves)

This is a marvellous novel, a great discovery for me, courtesy of fellow Spanish Lit Month veteran, Grant from 1streading. The House of Ulloa tells a feisty tale of contrasting values as a virtuous Christian chaplain finds himself embroiled in the exploits of a rough and ready marquis and those of his equally lively companions. This classic of 19^th-century Spanish literature is a joy from start to finish, packed full of incident to keep the reader entertained.

Who Among Us? by Mario Benedetti (tr. Nick Caistor)

This intriguing, elusive novella by the Uruguayan author and journalist, Mario Benedetti, uses various different forms to examine a timeless story of love and misunderstandings. We hear accounts from three different individuals embroiled in a love triangle. Assumptions are made; doubts are cast; and misunderstandings prevail – and we are never quite sure which of the three accounts is the most representative of the true situation, if indeed such a thing exists. Who among us can make that judgement when presented with these individuals’ perceptions of their relationships with others? This is a thoughtful, mercurial novella to capture the soul.

Sidewalks by Valeria Luiselli (tr. Christina McSweeney)

A beautiful collection of illuminating essays, several of which focus on locations, spaces and cities, and how these have evolved over time. Luiselli, a keen observer, is a little like a modern-day flâneur (or in one essay, a ‘cycleur’, a flâneur on a bicycle) as we follow her through the city streets and sidewalks, seeing the surroundings through her eyes and gaining access to her thoughts. A gorgeous selection of pieces, shot through with a melancholy, philosophical tone.

Things Look Different in the Light by Medardo Fraile (tr. Margaret Jull Costa)

Another wonderful collection of short pieces – fiction this time – many of which focus on the everyday. Minor occurrences take on a greater level of significance; fleeting moments have the power to resonate and live long in the memory. These pieces are subtle, nuanced and beautifully observed, highlighting situations or moods that turn on the tiniest of moments. While Fraile’s focus is on the minutiae of everyday life, the stories themselves are far from ordinary – they sparkle, refracting the light like the crystal chandelier in Child’s Play, one of my favourite pieces from this selection.

Nada by Carmen Laforet (tr. Edith Grossman)

Carmen Laforet was just twenty-three when her debut novel, Nada, was published. It’s an excellent book, dark and twisted with a distinctive first-person narrative. Here we see the portrayal of a family bruised by bitterness and suspicion, struggling to survive in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. This is a wonderfully evocative novel, a mood piece that captures the passion and intensity of its time and setting. Truly deserving of its status as a Spanish classic.

The Infatuations by Javier Marías (tr. Margaret Jull Costa)

My first Marías, and it remains a firm favourite. A man is stabbed to death in a shocking incident in the street, but this novel offers much more than a conventional murder mystery. In Marías’s hands, the story becomes an immersive meditation, touching on questions of truth, chance, love and mortality. The writing is wonderful – philosophical, reflective, almost hypnotic in style. Those long, looping sentences are beguiling, pulling the reader into a shadowy world, where things are not quite what they seem on at first sight.

Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo (tr. Daniel Balderston)

I love the pieces in this volume of forty-two stories, drawn from a lifetime of Ocampo’s writing – the way they often start in the realms of normality and then tip into darker, slightly surreal territory as they progress. Several of them point to a devilish sense of magic in the everyday, the sense of strangeness that lies hidden in the seemingly ordinary. Published by NYRB Classics, Thus Were Their Faces is an unusual, poetic collection of vignettes, many of which blur the margins between reality and the imaginary world. Best approached as a volume to dip into whenever you’re in the mood for something different and beguiling.

Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas (tr. Anne McLean)

Vila-Matas travels to Paris where he spends a month recalling the time he previously spent in this city, trying to live the life of an aspiring writer – just like the one Ernest Hemingway recounts in his memoir, A Moveable Feast. Vila-Matas’ notes on this rather ironic revisitation are to form the core of an extended lecture on the theme of irony entitled ‘Never Any End to Paris’; and it is in this form that the story is presented to the reader. This is a smart, playful and utterly engaging novel, full of self-deprecating humour and charm.

Do let me know what you think of these books if you’ve read some of them. Hopefully, I’ll be able to fit in another couple of titles during the month, possibly more if the event is extended into August, as in recent years.

Maybe you have plans of your own for Spanish Lit Month – if so, what do you have in mind? Or perhaps you have a favourite book, first published in Spanish or Portuguese? Feel free to mention it alongside any other comments below.

Your Face Tomorrow trilogy by Javier Marías (tr. Margaret Jull Costa)

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Regular readers of this blog may be aware of my fondness for the novels of Javier Marías, widely regarded as one of the preeminent writers of our generation. So, it was with a strong sense of anticipation that I picked up his epic trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow, generally considered to be his greatest work.

That said, I wasn’t sure about this series when I read the first volume, Fever and Spear, back in November last year, so much so that I didn’t write about it at the time. While thoughtful and philosophical (perhaps more so than some of the other Marías novels I’d previously read), this opening instalment was fairly slow going throughout, especially in terms of narrative drive. Nevertheless, I preserved with the series, returning to it during my recovery from a fracture earlier this year (big chunksters being very much the order of the day at that point). Now that I’ve read the other two books in this masterful trilogy, I can see what that first volume was setting out to achieve in laying the essential groundwork for the revelations to come.

In brief, the overarching story revolves around Jacques Deza, a Spanish man who has just moved to England following the recent split from his ex-wife, Luisa, and their two young children. (Those of you who are familiar with Marias’ earlier novel, All Souls, will recognise Deza from there.) Back in the UK, Deza reconnects with various former colleagues from a previous stint at Oxford University, through which he is introduced to the shadowy surveillance expert, Bertram Tupra – a man who appears to be linked to, or possibly employed by, MI6.

Tupra believes Jacques has a particular gift or sense of intuition – more specifically, an ability to assess a person’s inherent character and predict how they are going to behave in the future. In short, by looking at a person’s demeanour today, Deza can ‘foresee’ their face tomorrow.

With this in mind, Deza is recruited into Tupra’s organisation, a nameless group whose overall objectives remain something of a mystery. Ostensibly, Deza will be called upon to assess various individuals in the public eye – typically politicians, celebrities and other figures in positions of power. However, as the true nature of Tupra’s operations become increasingly apparent, Deza is drawn into a deeply sinister world, one where violence and torture are second nature and manipulative deceptions are frequently employed.

The state needs treachery, venality, deceit, crime, illegal acts, conspiracy, dirty tricks (on the other hand, it needs very few acts of heroism, or only now and then, to provide a contrast). If those things didn’t exist, or not enough, the state would have to invent them. It already does. Why do you think new offences are constantly being created? What wasn’t an offence becomes one, so that no one is ever entirely clean. Why do you think we intervene in and regulate everything, even where it’s unnecessary or where it doesn’t concern us? We need laws to be violated and broken. What would be the point of having laws if everyone obeyed them? We’d never get anywhere. We couldn’t exist. (p. 128, vol 3, Poison, Shadow and Farewell)

Almost without realising it, Deza finds himself intimately involved in Tupra’s dirty work, both indirectly as a hapless witness to scenes of a brutal assault and more directly as an active participant. His transformation from horrified onlooker to aggressive perpetrator is one of the trilogy’s key masterstrokes. Along the way, the narrative touches on incidents from the deeply personal, such as Deza’s ex-wife and her current relationships, to the broadly political – the latter including a devastating betrayal of trust from WW2 and horrific episodes from the Spanish Civil War.

Many of Marías’ familiar trademarks are present here, from the long, looping sentences and extended meditations that form a key part of his reflective style, to the key symbols and motifs which recur throughout – for instance, the image of a drop of blood on the floor, the rim of which proves particularly stubborn to remove. (The need to erase the final traces of a ‘taint’ or ‘stain’ crops up again and again, each time in a different context, resonating and reverberating with increasing power.)

The ongoing fascination with listening and surveillance is there too – an element which appears in some of Marías’ earlier books, perhaps most notably, A Heart So White. In some ways, the art of assessing character can be viewed as a form of interpretation or translation – another recurring theme in this writer’s work. Marías’ own particular brand of humour is also in evidence, providing some nicely judged moments of levity amidst the darkness of Tupra’s empire. Volume two of the trilogy, Dance and Dream, contains a fabulous disco scene, complete with wild dancing and some outrageously indecent behaviour before the violence kicks in. in this scene, Deza is observing an associate, the licentious attaché De la Garza, who appears to be taking quite an interest in , Flavia Manoia, the wife of an important contact.

He was clearly a man who had no time for good taste, or in whom bad taste was so pervasive that it crossed all frontiers, the clear and the blurred; more than that, he was someone capable of taking a lascivious interest in almost any female being – a rather smutty interest, verging on the merely evacuative – at Sir Peter Wheeler’s party, he had been capable of taking a fancy, and quite a large fancy at that, to the not-quite-venerable reverend widow or Deaness Wadman, with her soft, straining décolletage and her precious stone necklace of orange segments. (I mean, of course, an interest in any female human being, I would not like to insinuate things I know nothing about and of which I have no proof.) Flavia Manoia, who was of a similar age, but with considerably more style and dash (a dash of her former beauty, I mean), could easily turn his head after the couple of drinks he already had inside him or was planning to drink in the next few minutes. (pp. 65-66, book 2, Dance and Dream)

(For more wild nights at the disco, see the earlier Marias novel, All Souls.)

Overall, the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy is a tremendous achievement, a thought-provoking treatise on truth, betrayal, coercion and culpability. As a whole, the narrative raises some key questions about the nature of violence, particularly whether the final outcome can ever justify the means. It also forces us to question our own likely responses were we to find ourselves in Deza’s precarious situation. How can any of us ever know just how we would react in the face of extreme adversity? How far would we go to protect the life of a loved one or the safety of our children? It’s almost impossible to tell. The prediction of future behaviour or ‘your face tomorrow’ is more challenging than you might think.

Final notes: If you are thinking of embarking on this trilogy at any point, I would highly recommend you read both All Souls and A Heart So White first – the former to gain an appreciation of Deza’s backstory and earlier time at Oxford University (many of the individuals he encountered in his academic days are referred to again here); the latter for an insight into Custardoy, a rather brash copier of famous paintings who plays a key role in YFT volume three, Poison, Shadow and Farewell.

Also, do persevere with the trilogy even if you find it slow going at first – it really does pay off by the time you get to volumes two and three, I promise!

(This is my contribution to Stu’s Spanish and Portuguese Literature month – you can find out more about it here.)

My edition of the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy was published by Vintage Books; personal copy.

Pazo de Villarei Albariño, 2015 – a wine for #SpanishLitMonth

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Seeing as July is the month for all thing Spanish (see here for a link to Richard and Stu‘s Spanish Lit Month), I thought I would take the opportunity to post a short note on an Albariño I tasted recently. It doesn’t take much for me to get excited about Spanish whites as they constitute much of my summer drinking along with Italian whites and Provençal/Corsican rosés. The wine in question is the Pazo de Villarei Albariño, 2015, from the Rías Baixas region in north-west Spain. (I’ve already written about a previous vintage of this wine, but the 2015 is the latest release.)

It’s a lovely wine; lemony, minerally and very refreshing. Plus it has a slight spritz that gives it a sort of joie de vivre which seems perfect for this time of year. If you’ve never tried Albariño before, the Villarei would make a good introduction to this grape variety, a staple of the Galicia area of Spain. This is a fresh, zingy, unoaked white wine which is light on its feet yet satisfying too. Shellfish or sea fillets would make a nice partner. As for a suitable book match, I have just the thing in mind: The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán, a Spanish classic set in Galicia. A review will follow later this month.

Most of my favourite Albariños seem to clock in at the £12-14 level – Pazo de Señorans and Fefiñanes are terrific quality, but at > £10 pb they might not be everyone’s idea of an everyday wine. Up to until last year, I’d struggled to find a reliable Albariño at the sub £10 level, but the Villarei is keenly priced at £8.50. I think it’s great value for money.

I bought this wine from The Wine Society (I have a link to The Society, so the vast majority of my wines are purchased there). Alternatively, you can use Wine Searcher to look for stockists. If you can’t find the Pazo de Villarei, then the Pazo de Señorans and Fefiñanes are truly excellent wines, albeit a little more expensive.

My notes on another couple of favourite Spanish white wines can be found here, The Gaba do Xil is an unoaked Godello from Galicia while Las Olas is a Verdejo from the Rueda region. Enjoy.